People in a New Orleans East neighborhood are in shock tonight. What they thought was thunder was actually the sound of a train derailing just feet from their homes.

"It looked like something out of a movie. It was unbelievable." Calvin Guidry has lived close to the tracks on Briarwood near Hayne Boulevard in New Orleans East for 15 years. "Train comes here pretty fast, on a regular basis. I'm glad no one was up there," he says.

Around 5:00 PM, the sound of thunder rattled Calvin's neighborhood. But it wasn't a storm brewing. It was a Norfolk Southern train derailing. Captain Edwin Homes with the New Orleans Fire Department says,
"136 cars total on the train. 29 are overturned. Preliminary results are there's nothing toxic."

Investigators are trying to figure out how it happened. No one is injured -- but people say they only see things like this on the big screen. "I was just thinking like how could this happen because trains pass here all the time," says Char-Nisha Gilliam. A Norfolk southern spokesman says 20 trains travel this route to and from Birmingham daily. But Calvin had a feeling about this derailment. He says, "I never thought that, you know, it would happen like this. But I knew eventually something would happen."